‘Beauty for Ashes and the Oil of Gladness: The Border-Crossing God, Asylum Seekers, and the Church’s Exile into Hope’

In this chapter, we locate the Church’s welcoming ethos in ministry with refugees and asylum seekers in the biblical theme of God’s faithful companionship with those in displacement and exile. We connect theologically the Old Testament ethic which presupposes the ‘resident alien’ to be morally included in God’s promise of ‘blessing’ to the story of Christ’s incarnation as the Son of God’s ‘migratory’ journey to and exile within creaturely humanity. We then relate this theological narrative to empirically gathered experiences of migrants in churches in London. This for us redefines redefines biblical imagery of migration, exile, and the faithfulness of God beyond borders, giving us a distinctly Christian language of the self-giving, border-crossing God. We conclude from this, and from what we have learned from those taking part in this research, that the church’s pastoral and missional identity is faced with the political implications of welcoming refugee claimants and asylum seekers living in our midst, namely by asking the question ‘Who is God to refugees and asylum seekers in our midst?’